Slow Times

[Joseph Alkana]

At 08:02 AM 5/21/97 -0400, you wrote:
>     Is anyone else experiencing slow times?
John and all,
I am buried in work right now, with the phone ringing off the hook mostly on
Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Some time ago I made a concerted effort to
stay in touch with some very good teachers. I will sometimes stop by, with
permission of course, to touch up a unison or fix a sticky key or something.
We're talking about a 5 to ten minute stop here at the teacher's house. Also
I keep a working relationship with a dealer and stay in touch frequently.
This "stick stirring has produced a lot of referal business, which has in
turn produced more, ad infinitum ad nauseaum.
I find that the best source of business comes from referrals.
 Slow? Hardly. I have one grand piano in for refinishing, another grand in
for restringing and action work, an upright to restring, hammer and replace
keytops, three sets of keys to re-key and re-bush plus one console to put in
hammers, dampers and regulate. Also I have one grand action to try and
improve and an upright action to finish reshaping hammers to take back
Friday for a regulation job.
Tunings? I have a school district to work, several churches that are
demanding my services, a recording studio piano needing some attention...all
in addition to three plus residential tunings I try bang out each day. I'm
only booked two weeks in advance at this point. I understand several of my
fellow techs in this area are booked way into July.

Sure hope I can get a vacation this year. Probably not though. Like the past
five years I'll probably end up at convention learning more about pianos and
how to take care of them. What a "viscious" circle: Learn more so you can do
more. Do more, earn more! :)

Joseph Alkana RPT
North Bend, WA